Correction: The extra layer of copyright protection the World Intellectual Property Organization broadcast treaty will create is for content that already is protected where applicable, said Knowledge Ecology International Geneva Representative Thiru Balasubramaniam (CD Dec 9 p9).

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., will introduce a bill to limit how law enforcement agencies can make bulk data requests and to require warrants for geolocation information requests and wireless data protections, his office said Monday in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/18iSsQd). He released responses from eight carriers which gave him information about the requests they receive. The carriers received more than a million requests for wireless data from law enforcement agencies in 2012, Markey said in a statement. Markey said he backs legislation “so that Americans can have confidence that their information is protected and standards are in place for the retention and disposal of this sensitive data.” The carriers Markey queried were U.S. Cellular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Leap Wireless /Cricket Communications, MetroPCS, Verizon, AT&T and C Spire Wireless. The proposed bill would force the FCC to create rules limiting how long carriers can hold onto customers’ data. Law enforcement agencies would also have to be more up front about how many requests they issue. Markey’s queries and proposed law also target “'cell phone tower dumps,’ in which carriers provide all the phone numbers of mobile phone users that connect with a tower during a specific period of time,” said his release. There were about 9,000 such tower dumps in 2012, it said. Markey also outlined the money the carriers receive as compensation for requests: “AT&T received $10 million; T-Mobile received $11 million; and Verizon less than $5 million in just 2012 alone.” Markey criticized the unclear policies on data retention and pointed to AT&T holding data for five years. Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote a Slate op-ed (http://slate.me/1gTx58i) slamming the practices and said it’s “long past time for Congress to update our electronic privacy laws.” The quantity of agency requests to carriers is “staggering,” she said, lamenting the lack of clear policies on how the data are used. The ACLU slammed the practices in its own separate news release (http://bit.ly/1bszip4). “There is an easy fix to part of this problem,” said ACLU Washington Legislative Counsel Chris Calabrese. “President Obama and members of Congress should pass legislation that updates our outdated privacy laws by requiring law enforcement to get a probable cause warrant before service providers disclose the contents of our electronic communications to the government."

House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., planned to have introduced legislation Monday to stop people from talking on their cellphones on airplanes, he said, delivering on a threat other lawmakers have made in recent weeks. Shuster calls his bill the Prohibiting In-Flight Voice Communications on Mobile Wireless Devices Act and posted online a bill copy (http://1.usa.gov/19wPeDy). The legislation focuses on domestic commercial flights and forbids any phone conversation when the plane is in flight. Shuster’s office cited the FCC draft NPRM to review whether, from a technical perspective, such phone conversations should be allowed. “For passengers, being able to use their phones and tablets to get online or send text messages is a useful in-flight option,” Shuster said in a statement (http://1.usa.gov/1ktm4uo). “But if passengers are going to be forced to listen to the gossip in the aisle seat, it’s going to make for a very long flight,” he said. “For those few hours in the air with 150 other people, it’s just common sense that we all keep our personal lives to ourselves and stay off the phone.” The bill doesn’t mention the FCC or the Federal Aviation Administration, and directs the secretary of transportation to issue rules banning inflight conversations.

Cablevision and the Game Show Network want to continue delaying their program carriage case until the U.S. Supreme Court makes a decision on a cert petition submitted by Tennis Channel (CD Nov 29 p19) asking the justices to overturn the Comcast v. FCC decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “The meaning and reach of the evidentiary standards set forth in the Comcast Cable decision are thus potentially subject to further review,” said GSN in a joint status report submitted to FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel Friday (http://bit.ly/1jEYIV3). Both GSN and Cablevision said they needed the Comcast verdict and its effect on program carriage law to be finalized, either by a denial of cert or a Supreme Court decision, to proceed with their case. The Cablevision/GSN case has been on hold since June, while the parties waited for other carriage disputes to resolve, with Tennis Channel’s complaint against Comcast (CD May 29 p1) the last remaining question mark. In the joint status report, the companies suggest that they be allowed to wait for the Supreme Court process to finish, and to submit another joint report either within 60 days of the Dec. 6 filing or 10 days after the Supreme Court resolves the Tennis Channel matter, whichever is earlier.

Economist papers on retransmission consent filed by NAB have “assorted deficiencies, flaws and problems,” Mediacom said in comments in docket 10-71. The notion that there are 565 separate and distinct national networks “that could serve as substitutes for the popular programs of a Big-Four network carried by a station that is shut off during a negotiating impasse is ridiculous on its face,” it said in reference to a 2010 study by Navigant Economics for NAB. Many of the networks are unavailable on most cable systems and describe themselves as “national” only because they would like to be nationally, rather than locally or regionally, distributed, “but that dream has not been realized and is unlikely to be in the foreseeable (or even unforeseeable) future,” it said. Many of the channels offer highly specialized programming “that would not be considered by the typical viewer as a substitute for popular broadcast network shows,” it said. The Navigant paper’s conclusion “that market conditions preclude broadcast station owners from charging supra-competitive retrans fees is intellectual snake oil,” it said. Mediacom also referred to NAB’s letter last week as “just another instance of spin-doctoring.” Cable interests have distorted NAB’s arguments “and largely reiterated discredited claims and calls for government intervention into the retransmission consent market, even where the commission has no authority to act,” NAB said in that letter (http://bit.ly/J7XXX0).

WikiLeaks released more documents that it said came from the ongoing negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This marks the second time it’s released documents related to the negotiations (CD Nov 14 p21). The “secret TPP documents” show “the state of negotiations as the twelve TPP countries began supposedly final negotiations at a trade ministers’ meeting in Singapore this week,” it said. WikiLeaks said one of the documents describes work by the U.S. to get other countries to adopt U.S. stances, while the other document lists, “country-by-country, the many areas of disagreement remaining.” The U.S. Trade Representative’s office had no comment.

Smartphones, tablets and e-readers can now be switched on in “flight mode” throughout an entire airline journey without a risk to safety, said the European Commission Monday. Updated guidance from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) allows, for the first time, the use of personal electronic devices in flight mode from gate to gate, the EC said. This is the first step toward safe expansion of the use of in-flight electronics during taxiing, take-off and landing, said Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas. The next step will be to look at how to connect to the network on-board, he said. He asked EASA to speed up its review of the safe use of transmitting devices on planes, with new guidance expected within the next year. It’s up to each airline to update its operating rules, the EC said. In the U.S., the FCC is to vote Thursday on an rulemaking that would allow airlines to authorize cellphones to be used during flights (CD Nov 22 p6).

The Inmarsat-5 satellite sent initial signals from orbit, Boeing said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1breLhh). “After reaching final orbit, it will complete several additional maneuvers and tests before officially beginning service for Inmarsat.” The Boeing-built satellite launched Sunday from Kazakhstan on an International Launch Services rocket, it said. The satellite is the first to launch for Inmarsat’s forthcoming Ka-band network (CD Dec 4 p16).

Global patent filings in 2012 increased at their highest rate in 18 years, said a World Intellectual Property Organization news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1krVXnn). Patent filings increased by 9.2 percent last year to 2.35 million, while those for trademarks rose 6 percent, a lower growth rate than in recent years. China’s State Intellectual Property Office was primarily responsible for the growth in patent filings, with that office’s filings up 24 percent in 2012, said WIPO. It said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had a 7.8 percent filing increase.

More than 1.7 billion devices that can access over-the-top (OTT) content such as Netflix or Hulu will ship by the end of 2013, a 20 percent increase over 2012, said IHS in a press release Monday (http://bit.ly/1bSbjCz). The 1.7 billion OTT devices is “enough OTT systems to accommodate almost one out of every four people on the planet,” said IHS. But the market is projected to grow another 20 percent next year, reaching 2.67 billion by 2017, it said. Most OTT devices are either PCs or smartphones, accounting together for 836 million of 2012’s 1.43 billion OTT boxes, IHS said. Around 480 million non-PC, non-smartphone devices will ship in 2013, a 30 percent increase over 2012, the release said. Handheld game platforms are the only OTT device not growing in sales, IHS said. “Like other single-tasking systems, the space is under attack from more broadly based general-purpose equipment, primarily smartphones and tablets,” said IHS. Digital media adapters are suffering from the same affliction, it said, and make up less than 1 percent of the total OTT market in 2013. However, as the market grows, OTT devices might face technical challenges, IHS said. New media coding standards have stiffer computational requirements than previous ones, and strain mobile devices’ battery power. “Such challenges present rich opportunities for semiconductor suppliers as new standards and technologies continue to expand the market,” it said.